Abstract:
The British Atmospheric Data Center, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory home page address on the WWW is http://www.badc.rl.ac.uk/.

The British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) is a specialist data centre providing atmospheric data to the research community. The BADC is sited at the CCL Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire ... and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Prior to April 1994, the facility was funded by the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) and was known as the Geophysical Data Facility (GDF).

The Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) was launched on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) on 12th September 1991 and began operations on 11th October. It uses the technique of satellite solar occultation to make measurements of vertical profiles of pressure, temperature, aerosol extinction and mixing ratios of O3, HCl, HF, CH4, H2O, NO and NO2. The instrument achieves near-global coverage in the stratosphere and mesosphere.

The Improved Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder (ISAMS) was launched on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) on 12th September 1991. It operated until July 1992. ISAMS is an infra-red radiometer, which observes thermal emission from the Earth's limb. The technique of pressure modulator radiometry is used to derive vertical profiles of temperature mixing ratios of carbon monoxide (CO), water vapour (H2O), methane (CH4), ozone (O3), nitric acid (HNO3), dinitrogen pentoxide (N2O5), nitrogen oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) and aerosol extinction. The measurements span from the tropopause to the mesopause and cover the latitude range 80 deg. S to 80 deg. N (this is usually restricted to 34 deg. of latitude in one hemisphere).

The The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) was launched on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) on the 12th September 1991. It began collecting data on 19th September. It is the first satellite-borne instrument to make atmospheric sounding measurements at microwave frequencies. The instrument measures thermal emission from the Earth's limb, from which vertical profiles of chlorine monoxide (ClO), ozone (O3), water vapour (H2O) and atmospheric temperature are derived. Sulphur dioxide (SO2) profiles are also created for some periods.

The MST (Mesosphere, Stratosphere and Troposphere) Radar is primarily a Wind Profiler measuring vertical profiles of the wind. The UK MST Radar is situated at Capel Dewi near Aberystwyth in Wales. It was developed and is operated jointly by the University of Wales and RAL and is now funded by NERC. The MST Radar measures horizontal and vertical wind velocities above the site, in the height range from 2km to about 20 km. It can also receive daytime echoes from mesospheric heights between about 75 and 90 km.

The Stratosphere and Mesosphere Sounder (SAMS) was launched on the NIMBUS 7 satellite on 24th October 1978. Data is available between 1st January 1979 and 9th June 1983. This sounder was a multi-channel Infra-red radiometer designed to measure thermal emission from the middle atmosphere at the earth's limb. The instrument used a technique known as pressure-modulator radiometry to derive vertical profiles of temperature and gas mixing ratios of carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrogen oxide (NO), nitrous oxide (N2O) and water vapour (H2O). The latitude range covered by the temperature measurements extends from 50 deg.S to 67.5 deg.N, whilst the gas measurements have a more restricted range of 45 deg.S to 55 deg.N. Measurements were made in the height range 20-100km.

The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data consists of gridded averages of total ozone measurements covering the entire globe, starting from November 1978. From here you can obtain ASCII files of TOMS data and background information on the spatial and temporal coverage etc. TOMS instruments have been carried on the Nimbus-7 and Meteor-3 satellites. The original Nimbus-7 TOMS operated from November 1978 until May 1993. Meteor-3 TOMS was launched in August 1991 and operated until December 1994.

The United Kingdom Meteorological Office Assimilated Data Analyses for the UARS project are sets of global meteorological analyses provided by the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) containing 3-dimensional fields of temperature, geopotential height and wind components. They are produced primarily to provide independent correlative data for instruments on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), and are generated using the technique of data assimilation with data from operational meteorological observations.